The Golden Filco: a hands-on look at Majestouch KOBO covers

Today I’ll be having a look at one of the most unique keyboard customisation options available: KOBO keyboard covers. These covers replace the standard black cowling on a Filco Majestouch keyboard with a more colourful alternative, giving your keyboard a distinctive look.

There are currently three colour options available: Gold, Dark Metal and Red Wood. Gold offers a shiny golden finish that’ll make your keyboard the most eye-catching in the room. Dark Metal is a more subtle option, with a sleek modern look that wouldn’t look out of place on the console of your favourite sci-fi battleship. Red Wood is for the more classically inclined, with a stylish yet conservative polished wood look and feel.

Each of these fascias are hand-made by Filco manufacturers Diatec in their Tokyo factory, using the same high quality components and making use of the same battle-tested design you’d expect to find on a Filco keyboard. You’ll be adding style without sacrificing durability.

Hands-on with the Gold KOBO cover

To give you some first-hand impressions, I’ve been equipped with the Gold keyboard cover on top of a Filco Majestouch-2 Ninja Tenkeyless with Cherry MX Brown switches.

I was honestly quite impressed just opening up the package and seeing the gold glinting within – from the off, this is a keyboard that will stand out in a crowd, whether you’re at a LAN party or just at work. I was asked a few times if the keyboard was actually gold plated, so I trust it looks fairly realistic. As the keyboard shifts in the light, it gleams brightly.

The cover encases the entire top and sides of the keyboard – the original black bottom piece isn’t visible while the keyboard is sitting on your desk. The typical Filco branding is intact, also in gold and inlaid to match the body. Besides from the usually located LED covers, the rest of the glossy surface is unadorned.

The whole piece is highly reflective, but as it’s a lighter colour fingerprints and other smudges aren’t apparent unless you’re looking very closely. Still, I didn’t find keeping the keyboard clean to be too much of an issue, as the keys will take the vast majority of your touches and the cleaning cloth makes short work of any marks that do appear.

I’m quite fond of the way that the cover looks paired with the Ninja keycaps I’m using – the nearly all black keys look excellent against a golden backdrop. One of these covers would also go well with some custom keycaps – I’d love to see what the denizens of r/mechanicalkeyboards would come up with!

Your ultimate keyboard, made to order

One of the biggest advantages of the KOBO cover is that it’ll work with a wide range of Majestouch keyboards. You’ll still get to choose your size, switch type and keycap style – but now you have one more customisation option. Each KOBO cover is assembled to order, so you’re free to combine any of the three covers with any Majestouch keyboard in stock at the Keyboard Company.

To order a KOBO cover from The Keyboard Company, just add it to your basket with any compatible keyboard and place your order. We’ll install the cover on-site, then ship it on to you with a complimentary Filco branded cleaning cloth so you can keep it shiny and spotless.

The KOBO cover is the next level in keyboard customisation, going beyond what’s possible with keycaps alone.

For more information on the three colour options we have available, check out the relevant Keyboard Co product pages linked below. Just click ‘TKL’ to be taken to the relevant Tenkeyless product page, or ‘Full Size’ to be taken to the Full Size product page.

I think that just about covers it – if you’ll excuse the pun. I’ve still got the Golden Filco sitting on my desk, so if you’ve got any questions or comments I’d be happy to hear them. You can reach me in the blog comments section below, on Twitter @keyboardco, on Facebook or in the Reddit comment thread.

I’ll be following up this post with some of my own photographs with the golden Filco, as soon as I’m back at home with access to my camera. In the mean-time, check out the rather lovely press shots of each model in the gallery below.
just a few more minutes now…